Intent authoring using weak supervision and co-training for automated response systems

ABSTRACT

Embodiments for training an automated response system using weak supervision and co-training in a computing environment are provided. A plurality of conversational logs comprising interactive dialog sessions between agents and clients for a given product or service are received. A subset of the plurality of conversational logs are retrieved according to a defined criterion, and a selected set of the subset of the plurality of retrieved conversational logs are labeled by a user. The labeling is associated with a semantic scope of intent considered by the clients. A combination of propagation operations and learning algorithms using the selected set of labeled conversational logs are applied to a remaining corpus of the plurality of conversational logs to train the automated response system according to the semantic scope of intent.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention

The present invention relates in general to computing systems, and moreparticularly, to various embodiments for training automated responsesystems with intent data from a repository of existing conversationallogs.

Description of the Related Art

Customer contact center systems provide support for customers of aparticular product or service by allowing those users to make requestsfor service that can include a question posed by the user related to theproduct or service. Generally speaking, these systems receive requestsfor service in various forms (e.g., in the form of a phone call, webpage form, instant message, email, etc.), and route the requests toeither a virtual agent or live, human agent for addressing the requestand providing an answer to the question. For example, a chat or otherinteractive session can be conducted between the customer or client andan automated virtual agent which guides the interaction based on a setof scripts and a knowledgebase related to the topic of the contact. Inother cases, a chat session can be initiated between the customer andthe live agent who can interact directly with the customer over any oneor more of the available channels (e.g., web chat, instant message,email exchange, etc.).

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Various embodiments including a method that uses weak supervision andco-training to help clients select data for training an automatedresponse system in a computing environment are provided. A plurality ofconversational logs comprising interactive dialog sessions betweenagents and clients for a given product or service are received. A subsetof the plurality of conversational logs are retrieved according to adefined criteria, and a selected set of the subset of the plurality ofretrieved conversational logs are labeled by a user. The labeling isassociated with a semantic scope of intent considered by the clients. Acombination of propagation operations and learning algorithms using theselected set of labeled conversational logs are applied to a remainingcorpus of the plurality of conversational logs to train the automatedresponse system according to the semantic scope of intent.

In addition to the foregoing exemplary embodiment, various other systemand computer program product embodiments are provided and supply relatedadvantages. The foregoing Summary has been provided to introduce aselection of concepts in a simplified form that are further describedbelow in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended toidentify key features or essential features of the claimed subjectmatter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in determining the scopeof the claimed subject matter. The claimed subject matter is not limitedto implementations that solve any or all disadvantages noted in thebackground.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order that the advantages of the invention be readily understood, amore particular description of the invention briefly described abovewill be rendered by reference to specific embodiments that areillustrated in the appended drawings. Understanding that these drawingsdepict only typical embodiments of the invention and are not thereforeto be considered to be limiting of its scope, the invention will bedescribed and explained with additional specificity and detail throughthe use of the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram depicting an exemplary computing node,according to embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is an additional block diagram depicting an exemplary cloudcomputing environment, according to embodiments of the presentinvention;

FIG. 3 is an additional block diagram depicting abstraction modellayers, according to embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a flow chart diagram depicting a method for training anautomated response system using weak supervision and co-training,according to embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a block diagram depicting a system overview of a contentauthoring tool, according to embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram depicting a system architecture implementingthe content authoring tool, according to embodiments of the presentinvention;

FIG. 7 is a flow chart diagram depicting a high level view of the methodfor training the automated response system using the learning pipeline,according to embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 8 is a block diagram depicting a user interface implementing thecontent authoring tool, according to embodiments of the presentinvention; and

FIG. 9 is a block diagram depicting a propagation example whenimplementing the content authoring tool, according to embodiments of thepresent invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

As previously mentioned, in contemporary customer contact centers, thesystems therein provide support for customers of a particular product orservice by allowing those users to make requests for service that caninclude a question posed by the user related to the product or service.In some cases, a chat session can be initiated between the customer orclient and a live agent (e.g., a human operator) or a virtual agent(e.g., a chat bot operated by a computing system) who can interactdirectly with the customer over any one or more available channels(e.g., web chat, instant message, email exchange, etc.). In the case ofrelying more on virtual agents, often times a substantial obstacle toovercome when interacting with human customers or clients isascertaining by the virtual agent what the underlying intent is of aquery or statement posed by human customer or client.

Inherently, humans ask questions or utter statements in differentsemantic variances notwithstanding the intent of the question orstatement in selected cases are similar. An intent in a conversationalmodel is a concept that represents a set of semantically similarsentences for which the same response is suitable in a dialog. Forexample, one client may pose the question “How can I reset my internetaccount”, while another may state “I need to reset my internetpassword”. These questions/statements, each of which the intent would befairly easily understood to be more or less equivalent by a humanoperator, may trigger a variety of responses from virtual agents. In onescenario, the virtual agent may interpret “resetting the internetaccount” question as a query regarding the resetting of the client'sinternet service in general (e.g., resetting a modem or routerassociated with their account), where the client's actual intent was thesame as the other client requesting a password reset to get into theirinternet (billing) account. A vast variety of examples exist like thesein which virtual agents must be trained to offer accurate results to theclient when provided with utterances of such variety.

Modern chat systems recognize this limitation and attempt to createintent models by recognizing statistical classifiers trained with sampleutterances. Users/administrators often create intents by collecting andannotating many sentences with their respective intents, which is alabor-intensive process. In some cases, users may cycle through hundredsif not thousands of sample utterances while still not achieving a veryhigh intent success rate when populated into live dialog. However, thehigh cost involved often means that the user can afford to annotate onlysmall example sets of utterances, resulting in further sub-optimalintent recognition performance in live dialog situations.

Accordingly, the functionality of the present invention proposestechniques to drastically reduce the labor required in annotating(labeling) available utterances provided between clients and humanagents to magnify a user's input effort in mapping intent information tothe utterances while additionally substantially increasing the accuracythereof for conversational services. These techniques are particularlysuited to clients who have access to an existing repository ofhuman-to-human conversation (chat) logs. Often, those clients are theones most ready to employ a robotic conversational service, as they haveexisting business needs and request handling processes to interact withtheir end clients. In this way, the existing repository ofconversational logs may offer a way for these clients to leverage theirdomain knowledge and their existing chat log corpus to define userintents with which they can quickly build up a robotic service.

In some embodiments described herein and assuming that a client hasaccess to a large collection of chat logs recording human-to-human orhuman-to-bot transactions, a search service is employed that allows theuser to retrieve examples of the relevant sentences covering thesemantic scope of an intent they desire to build. Taking a small set ofutterances labeled by the user as either positive or negative examples,a sequence of propagation operations and machine learning algorithms areapplied that train one another in turn to leverage the labeled examplesto build a much larger set of representatives for the intent to cover alarger range of linguistic variability.

The method gives a user an easy way to define an intent in a dialog. Thesearch-and-click labeling tool described herein provides an interfacefor the user to outline the semantic scope of the intent with therepository of domain knowledge. A propagation and learning pipelinemakes effective use of this labeling effort by generalizing these labelsto close semantic neighbors among the other utterances in the corpus,and multiple learning algorithms applied in different stages allow fordifferent types of linguistic variability to be taken into account.Offered within a chat-bot or other interactive dialog hosting service,these mechanisms provide quick, efficient, and accurate trainingallowing a user to convert a human agent operated conversational service(otherwise referred to herein as an “automated response system” or “livedialog system”) to one that is handled virtually.

It is understood in advance that although this disclosure includes adetailed description on cloud computing, implementation of the teachingsrecited herein are not limited to a cloud computing environment and/orcomputing systems associated with one or more vehicles. Rather,embodiments of the present invention are capable of being implemented inconjunction with any other type of computing environment now known orlater developed.

Cloud computing is a model of service delivery for enabling convenient,on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computingresources (e.g., networks, network bandwidth, servers, processing,memory, storage, applications, virtual machines, and services) that canbe rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort orinteraction with a provider of the service. This cloud model may includeat least five characteristics, at least three service models, and atleast four deployment models.

Characteristics are as follows:

On-demand self-service: a cloud consumer can unilaterally provisioncomputing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, asneeded automatically without requiring human interaction with theservice's provider.

Broad network access: capabilities are available over a network andaccessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneousthin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Resource pooling: the provider's computing resources are pooled to servemultiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physicaland virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according todemand. There is a sense of location independence in that the consumergenerally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of theprovided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher levelof abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter).

Rapid elasticity: capabilities can be rapidly and elasticallyprovisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out andrapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilitiesavailable for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can bepurchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured service: cloud systems automatically control and optimizeresource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level ofabstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage,processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can bemonitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both theprovider and consumer of the utilized service.

Service Models are as follows:

Software as a Service (SaaS): the capability provided to the consumer isto use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure.The applications are accessible from various client devices through athin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). Theconsumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructureincluding network, servers, operating systems, storage, or evenindividual application capabilities, with the possible exception oflimited user-specific application configuration settings.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): the capability provided to the consumer isto deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquiredapplications created using programming languages and tools supported bythe provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlyingcloud infrastructure including networks, servers, operating systems, orstorage, but has control over the deployed applications and possiblyapplication hosting environment configurations.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): the capability provided to theconsumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and otherfundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy andrun arbitrary software, which can include operating systems andapplications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlyingcloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage,deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networkingcomponents (e.g., host firewalls).

Deployment Models are as follows:

Private cloud: the cloud infrastructure is operated solely for anorganization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party andmay exist on-premises or off-premises.

Community cloud: the cloud infrastructure is shared by severalorganizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns(e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and complianceconsiderations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third partyand may exist on-premises or off-premises.

Public cloud: the cloud infrastructure is made available to the generalpublic or a large industry group and is owned by an organization sellingcloud services.

Hybrid cloud: the cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or moreclouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities butare bound together by standardized or proprietary technology thatenables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting forload-balancing between clouds).

A cloud computing environment is service oriented with a focus onstatelessness, low coupling, modularity, and semantic interoperability.At the heart of cloud computing is an infrastructure comprising anetwork of interconnected nodes.

Referring now to FIG. 1, a schematic of an example of a cloud computingnode is shown. Cloud computing node 10 is only one example of a suitablecloud computing node and is not intended to suggest any limitation as tothe scope of use or functionality of embodiments of the inventiondescribed herein. Regardless, cloud computing node 10 is capable ofbeing implemented and/or performing any of the functionality set forthhereinabove.

In cloud computing node 10 there is a computer system/server 12, whichis operational with numerous other general purpose or special purposecomputing system environments or configurations. Examples of well-knowncomputing systems, environments, and/or configurations that may besuitable for use with computer system/server 12 include, but are notlimited to, personal computer systems, server computer systems, thinclients, thick clients, hand-held or laptop devices, multiprocessorsystems, microprocessor-based systems, set top boxes, programmableconsumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputer systems, mainframecomputer systems, and distributed cloud computing environments thatinclude any of the above systems or devices, and the like.

Computer system/server 12 may be described in the general context ofcomputer system-executable instructions, such as program modules, beingexecuted by a computer system. Generally, program modules may includeroutines, programs, objects, components, logic, data structures, and soon that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract datatypes. Computer system/server 12 may be practiced in distributed cloudcomputing environments where tasks are performed by remote processingdevices that are linked through a communications network. In adistributed cloud computing environment, program modules may be locatedin both local and remote computer system storage media including memorystorage devices.

As shown in FIG. 1, computer system/server 12 in cloud computing node 10is shown in the form of a general-purpose computing device. Thecomponents of computer system/server 12 may include, but are not limitedto, one or more processors or processing units 16, a system memory 28,and a bus 18 that couples various system components including systemmemory 28 to processor 16.

Bus 18 represents one or more of any of several types of bus structures,including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, anaccelerated graphics port, and a processor or local bus using any of avariety of bus architectures. By way of example, and not limitation,such architectures include Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus,Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) bus, Enhanced ISA (EISA) bus, VideoElectronics Standards Association (VESA) local bus, and PeripheralComponent Interconnects (PCI) bus.

Computer system/server 12 typically includes a variety of computersystem readable media. Such media may be any available media that isaccessible by computer system/server 12, and it includes both volatileand non-volatile media, removable and non-removable media.

System memory 28 (or memory subsystem 28) can include computer systemreadable media in the form of volatile memory, such as random accessmemory (RAM) 30 and/or cache memory 32. Cache memory 32 may comprise,for example, a shared cache (such as an L2 cache) which is shared amongmultiple cores of the processor 16 and/or may comprise a private cache(such as an L1 cache). Computer system/server 12 may further includeother removable/non-removable, volatile/non-volatile computer systemstorage media. By way of example only, storage system 34 can be providedfor reading from and writing to a non-removable, non-volatile magneticmedia (not shown and typically called a “hard drive”). Although notshown, a magnetic disk drive for reading from and writing to aremovable, non-volatile magnetic disk (e.g., a “floppy disk”), and anoptical disk drive for reading from or writing to a removable,non-volatile optical disk such as a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or other opticalmedia can be provided. In such instances, each can be connected to bus18 by one or more data media interfaces. As will be further depicted anddescribed below, system memory 28 may include at least one programproduct having a set (e.g., at least one) of program modules that areconfigured to carry out the functions of embodiments of the invention.

Program/utility 40, having a set (at least one) of program modules 42,may be stored in system memory 28 by way of example, and not limitation,as well as an operating system, one or more application programs, otherprogram modules, and program data. Each of the operating system, one ormore application programs, other program modules, and program data orsome combination thereof, may include an implementation of a networkingenvironment. Program modules 42 generally carry out the functions and/ormethodologies of embodiments of the invention as described herein.

Computer system/server 12 may also communicate with one or more externaldevices 14 such as a keyboard, a pointing device, a display 24, etc.;one or more devices that enable a user to interact with computersystem/server 12; and/or any devices (e.g., network card, modem, etc.)that enable computer system/server 12 to communicate with one or moreother computing devices. Such communication can occur via Input/Output(I/O) interfaces 22. Still yet, computer system/server 12 cancommunicate with one or more networks such as a local area network(LAN), a general wide area network (WAN), and/or a public network (e.g.,the Internet) via network adapter 20. As depicted, network adapter 20communicates with the other components of computer system/server 12 viabus 18. It should be understood that although not shown, other hardwareand/or software components could be used in conjunction with computersystem/server 12. Examples, include, but are not limited to: microcode,device drivers, redundant processing units, external disk drive arrays,RAID systems, tape drives, and data archival storage systems, etc.

Referring now to FIG. 2, illustrative cloud computing environment 50 isdepicted. As shown, cloud computing environment 50 comprises one or morecloud computing nodes 10 with which local computing devices used bycloud consumers, such as, for example, personal digital assistant (PDA)or cellular telephone 54A, desktop computer 54B, laptop computer 54C,and/or automobile computer system 54N may communicate. Nodes 10 maycommunicate with one another. They may be grouped (not shown) physicallyor virtually, in one or more networks, such as Private, Community,Public, or Hybrid clouds as described hereinabove, or a combinationthereof. This allows cloud computing environment 50 to offerinfrastructure, platforms and/or software as services for which a cloudconsumer does not need to maintain resources on a local computingdevice. It is understood that the types of computing devices 54A-N shownin FIG. 2 are intended to be illustrative only and that computing nodes10 and cloud computing environment 50 can communicate with any type ofcomputerized device over any type of network and/or network addressableconnection (e.g., using a web browser).

Referring now to FIG. 3, a set of functional abstraction layers providedby cloud computing environment 50 (FIG. 2) is shown. It should beunderstood in advance that the components, layers, and functions shownin FIG. 3 are intended to be illustrative only and embodiments of theinvention are not limited thereto. As depicted, the following layers andcorresponding functions are provided:

Device layer 55 includes physical and/or virtual devices, embedded withand/or standalone electronics, sensors, actuators, and other objects toperform various tasks in a cloud computing environment 50. Each of thedevices in the device layer 55 incorporates networking capability toother functional abstraction layers such that information obtained fromthe devices may be provided thereto, and/or information from the otherabstraction layers may be provided to the devices. In one embodiment,the various devices inclusive of the device layer 55 may incorporate anetwork of entities collectively known as the “internet of things”(IoT). Such a network of entities allows for intercommunication,collection, and dissemination of data to accomplish a great variety ofpurposes, as one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate.

Device layer 55 as shown includes sensor 52, actuator 53, “learning”thermostat 56 with integrated processing, sensor, and networkingelectronics, camera 57, controllable household outlet/receptacle 58, andcontrollable electrical switch 59 as shown. Other possible devices mayinclude, but are not limited to various additional sensor devices,networking devices, electronics devices (such as a remote controldevice), additional actuator devices, so called “smart” appliances suchas a refrigerator or washer/dryer, and a wide variety of other possibleinterconnected objects.

Hardware and software layer 60 includes hardware and softwarecomponents. Examples of hardware components include: mainframes 61; RISC(Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture based servers 62;servers 63; blade servers 64; storage devices 65; and networks andnetworking components 66. In some embodiments, software componentsinclude network application server software 67 and database software 68.

Virtualization layer 70 provides an abstraction layer from which thefollowing examples of virtual entities may be provided: virtual servers71; virtual storage 72; virtual networks 73, including virtual privatenetworks; virtual applications and operating systems 74; and virtualclients 75.

In one example, management layer 80 may provide the functions describedbelow. Resource provisioning 81 provides dynamic procurement ofcomputing resources and other resources that are utilized to performtasks within the cloud computing environment. Metering and Pricing 82provides cost tracking as resources are utilized within the cloudcomputing environment, and billing or invoicing for consumption of theseresources. In one example, these resources may comprise applicationsoftware licenses. Security provides identity verification for cloudconsumers and tasks, as well as protection for data and other resources.User portal 83 provides access to the cloud computing environment forconsumers and system administrators. Service level management 84provides cloud computing resource allocation and management such thatrequired service levels are met. Service Level Agreement (SLA) planningand fulfillment 85 provides pre-arrangement for, and procurement of,cloud computing resources for which a future requirement is anticipatedin accordance with an SLA.

Workloads layer 90 provides examples of functionality for which thecloud computing environment may be utilized. Examples of workloads andfunctions which may be provided from this layer include: mapping andnavigation 91; software development and lifecycle management 92; virtualclassroom education delivery 93; data analytics processing 94;transaction processing 95; and, in the context of the illustratedembodiments of the present invention, various conversational and dialoganalyzing functions 96. One of ordinary skill in the art will appreciatethat the conversational and dialog analyzing functions 96 may also workin conjunction with other portions of the various abstractions layers,such as those in hardware and software 60, virtualization 70, management80, and other workloads 90 (such as data analytics processing 94, forexample) to accomplish the various purposes of the illustratedembodiments of the present invention.

Turning now to FIG. 4, a method 400 for training an automated responsesystem using weak supervision and co-training by a processor isdepicted, in which various aspects of the illustrated embodiments may beimplemented. The functionality 400 may be implemented as a methodexecuted as instructions on a machine, where the instructions areembodied on a tangible, non-transitory machine-readable storage medium.The functionality 400 may start in block 402. In some embodiments, aplurality of conversational logs comprising interactive dialog sessionsbetween agents and clients for a given product or service are receivedfrom a repository of stored conversational logs (step 404). A subset ofthe plurality of conversational logs are retrieved according to adefined criteria (step 406), and a selected set of the subset of theplurality of retrieved conversational logs are labeled by a user (step408). The labeling is associated with a semantic scope of intentconsidered by the clients. A combination of propagation operations andlearning algorithms using the selected set of labeled conversationallogs are applied to a remaining corpus of the plurality ofconversational logs to train the automated response system (i.e., theautomated conversational service or live dialog system) according to thesemantic scope of intent (step 410). The method 400 ends (step 412).

In accordance with aspects of the present invention, several functionalcomponents are considered. A first component includes a user interfacefor a user to ingest an existing conversation corpus (i.e., receivedfrom a data repository of previously saved conversational logs), by fileupload or online data transfer from a human-operated chat platform. Asecond component includes a search service for the user to query forutterances in the corpus that are relevant to a given intent. A thirdcomponent includes a labeling tool for the user to indicate whether eachof a selected set of retrieved utterances is in the intent or not. Afourth component includes an ensemble of propagation operations andmachine learning algorithms applied jointly (parallelly) or sequentiallyto leverage the user-provided labels to add utterances from the rest ofthe corpus to represent the intent. Finally, a fifth componentoptionally includes a component for suggesting alternative queries tothe user (i.e., presented within a user interface (UI) to the user) whomay then choose to launch one or more of additional queries to retrieveother relevant sentences from the corpus.

Referring now to FIG. 5 a system overview of a content authoring tool500 is depicted. As shown, the various functions, or “modules” offunctionality, hardware devices, and/or other components in the samedescriptive sense as has been previously described in FIGS. 1-3 may beincluded in FIG. 5. For example, processing unit 16 and memory 28 ofFIG. 1 may be employed in FIG. 5 to perform various computational, dataprocessing, storage and other functionality in accordance with variousaspects of the present invention.

The content authoring tool 500 includes a UI (described supra) toreceive a user query 502 to search the corpus of conversational logsreceived from the repository 504 of previously conducted interactivedialog sessions (chat logs) between human operators and human clients.The content authoring tool 500 retrieves a subset of the conversationallogs and presents a selected set of this subset to the user. The userthen inputs user labels 506 for each utterance of each of the selectedset of conversational logs such that the user affirms (inputs a positiveresponse) or denies (inputs a negative response) whether each of theseutterances is directed toward the specific intent of the user query.Various learning algorithms 508 then propagate these labels from theselected set of the subset of conversational logs to the remainingsubset of conversational logs of similar utterances. Once the labels arepropagated to the subset of conversational logs, the learning algorithmsin the collection 508 then use them for mutual training by applying thetrained algorithms jointly or sequentially upon the rest of theconversational log corpus. A final set of intent training data is thenused to train a classifier for a live automated response or live dialogsystem 510 (i.e., a conversational system using live dialog) toaccurately predict the intent of the utterances specified by the clientscurrently interacting with the platform, and therefore provide virtualresponses commensurate with the predicted intent.

Continuing, FIG. 6 is a block diagram depicting a system architecture600 for implementing the content authoring tool 500, according toembodiments of the present invention. In an exemplary embodiment, thearchitecture 600 is implemented within the context of the IBM® Watson®platform and includes a frontend 602 for receiving user tooling andapplication programming interface (API) requests into an API/UIapplication server 604 (which may execute a Web Sphere™ Liberty forJava™ profile). The application server 604 may communicate and exchangedata regarding the conversational logs with a data ingestion server 606for receiving and loading the corpus from the repository 504. The usermay issue a query to a query server 608 (through an API executing on theapplication server 604) to return utterances to the UI having a specific(queried) intent, and the query server 608 may communicate with the dataingestion server 606 using an Elasticsearch search engine 612 to performthe query on a database 614 (which may comprise a MongoDB™) associatedwith the stored conversational logs to return the utterances. Uponreturning a subset of the conversational logs and labeling a selectedset of the utterances therein functioning within the context of thelabeling learning server 610, the labeling learning server 610 may passpropagated labels and machine learning model data to the data ingestionserver 606 for further analyzation on the remaining corpus. Additionallyillustrated in the architecture 600 are administrative servicesincluding Watson services 616 (which may comprise natural languageunderstanding (NLU) or other functionality) and platform services 618(which may comprise Deadbolt or identity and access management (IAM) orother functionality).

FIG. 7 is a flow chart diagram depicting a method 700 for training theautomated response or live dialog system 510 using a learning pipelinethat includes weak supervision and co-training. The functionality 700may be implemented as a method executed as instructions on a machine,where the instructions are embodied on a tangible, non-transitorymachine-readable storage medium. At step 702, the user launches a searchquery into the system UI to retrieve utterances related to a semanticscope of intent input by the user, and the server (i.e., the queryserver 608) retrieves a set of utterances within determinedconversational logs initially identified to be similar to the semanticscope of intent input by the user (step 704). For example, the user mayissue a query related to the intent “teaching” and the server mayretrieve and return the 100 best matching utterances initially believedto be relevant to the “teaching” semantic scope of intent. The user thenis presented or identifies a selected subset of the matching utterancesretrieved by the server and manually labels the top N (e.g., the top 10best matching) presented utterances (step 706). This label informationmay then be propagated to additional utterances and/or the user may bepresented (via the UI) with suggestive alternative queries which mayretrieve other relevant utterances related thereto. The method 700 maythen return to step 702 where the user launches additional queries usingthe suggestive intent information to retrieve additional relevantresults. Returning to step 704, the server then may, as aforementioned,propagate the user's label information regarding the utterances to theremaining subset of the retrieved utterances of the conversational logs,and subsequently launch a learning pipeline to build a probabilisticclassifier to estimate intent probabilities for the larger (remainingset) of the corpus (step 708). Upon training the machine learning modelwith the correct intent information associated with the remainingcorpus, the server may then upload this trained classifier to a livedialog server (e.g., Watson) for use on a live automated response orlive dialog system 510 associated therewith (step 710).

In some aspects, the propagation operations comprise simple decisionrules that define an equivalent set of sentences (utterances) from theconversational logs which propagate or assign the same label provided bythe user to a seed set of examples from the subset to the remainingsubset of utterances. The machine learning algorithms, on the otherhand, use a mathematical model to generalize the label assignments. Itshould be noted that, as contextually referred to herein, the differencebetween propagation operations and learning algorithms are only in thecomplexity of the decision models or rules involved, which may varyaccording to implementation.

An example of a propagation operation may comprise, for each searchquery, the top N (e.g., N=100) returned results (utterances) being takenas an equivalent set. A selected subset of size M (e.g., M=10)utterances thereof are then presented to the user; and if the userlabels over a fraction (e.g., ½) of the presented sentences orutterances as positive, a positive label will be propagated to theentire set of N utterances.

Another example of a propagation operation may comprise, for eachsentence or utterance, computing its relative semantic neighborhood inthe corpus using a chosen featurization method and a suitable similaritymeasure (e.g., term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF)vectorization and cosine similarity). For each utterance receiving alabel either from the user or from a prior-stage classification, thelabel may be applied to all its semantic neighbors (e.g., utteranceshaving a cosine similarity of 0.99 or higher to the labeled utterance).

Machine learning algorithms suitable in this context may comprise anystatistical classifier trainable with a small number of seed utteranceswith user-provided or auto-propagated labels. In one aspect, the machinelearning based models may be performed using a wide variety of methodsor combinations of methods, such as supervised learning, unsupervisedlearning, reinforcement learning and so forth. Some non-limitingexamples of supervised learning which may be used with the presenttechnology include AODE (averaged one-dependence estimators), artificialneural network, backpropagation, Bayesian statistics, naive baysclassifier, Bayesian network, Bayesian knowledge base, case-basedreasoning, decision trees, inductive logic programming, Gaussian processregression, gene expression programming, group method of data handling(GMDH), learning automata, learning vector quantization, minimum messagelength (decision trees, decision graphs, etc.), lazy learning,instance-based learning, nearest neighbor algorithm, analogicalmodeling, probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, ripple downrules, a knowledge acquisition methodology, symbolic machine learningalgorithms, sub symbolic machine learning algorithms, support vectormachines, random forests, ensembles of classifiers, bootstrapaggregating (bagging), boosting (meta-algorithm), ordinalclassification, regression analysis, information fuzzy networks (IFN),statistical classification, linear classifiers, fisher's lineardiscriminant, logistic regression, perceptron, support vector machines,quadratic classifiers, k-nearest neighbor, hidden Markov models andboosting. Some non-limiting examples of unsupervised learning which maybe used with the present technology include artificial neural network,data clustering, expectation-maximization, self-organizing map, radialbasis function network, vector quantization, generative topographic map,information bottleneck method, IBSEAD (distributed autonomous entitysystems based interaction), association rule learning, apriorialgorithm, eclat algorithm, FP-growth algorithm, hierarchicalclustering, single-linkage clustering, conceptual clustering,partitional clustering, k-means algorithm, and fuzzy clustering.Specific details regarding any of the examples of supervised,unsupervised, reinforcement learning, or other machine learningdescribed in this paragraph are known and are considered to be withinthe scope of this disclosure.

In some embodiments, and as aforementioned, an ensemble of propagationand learning steps may leverage multiple views of the corpus ofconversational logs. When arranged in parallel (e.g., where simplegeneralization rules are applied to multiple search queriesindependently), the corpus may be projected to different views eachdefined by a query, and labels may be generalized according to eachview. When arranged in sequence, the generalization results from onestep can be used to train the next step. That is, the output model ofone propagation and/or learning operation may be used as input to a nextpropagation and/or learning operation. Thus, the subset of (seed)utterances may be used to initially train a small portion of the model,which then iterates over itself using various different propagationoperations and/or learning algorithms to accurately develop the modelusing the remaining corpus.

For example, the propagated labels for the per-query equivalent sets ofutterances may be used to train a probabilistic classifier where theper-query labels for each utterance are considered measurements (or, inmachine learning terminology, “features”). Weights on the features maythen be learned in a model optimization process. The classifier produceslabeling decisions and estimates of the posterior probabilities for alarger set of utterances (e.g., all those retrieved by at least one userquery). Those utterances decided with high probability for being eitherpositive or negative relative to the input semantic scope of intent maythen be used to train another classifier, such as a support vectormachine. The support vector machine may use another set of featuresunrelated to those used in previous steps (e.g., using a differentlearning model), and may be applied to the rest of the corpus. The jointuse of multiple rules or learning algorithms may therefore yield alabeled set of utterances from the corpus of conversational logs whichis much larger than the set explicitly labeled by the user. Theresultant examples can be used to train an intent classifier to be usedin live dialog on the automated response or interactive live dialogsystem 510.

Referring now to FIG. 8, a block diagram depicting a user interface (UI)800 implementing the content authoring tool 500 is illustrated. The UI800 may be presented in graphical form such as a graphical userinterface (GUI) having an intent input field 802 for input of thesemantic scope of intent (e.g., “create service credentials”) which iscurrently under consideration, a user query field 804 (e.g., “how tocreate credentials”), and various administrative function buttons orinputs 808A-n, which may include a “save” button 808A for savefunctionality, a “new intent” button 808B to create a new semantic scopeof intent, and a “logout” button 808 n to logout of the system. Ofcourse, the administrative function buttons or inputs 808A-n exemplifiedin UI 800 may be rearranged, renamed, or comprise only a small portionof the many various administrative input functions used in an actualimplementation.

The UI 800 may additionally include a conversation window 806 whichdisplays the resulting utterances retrieved from the user queryperformed by inputting information into the user query field 804. Theconversation window 806 may additionally comprise functionality to allowthe user to affirm or deny whether each retrieved utterance is relatedto the semantic scope of intent input in to the intent field 802. In thedepicted embodiment, to the left side of each utterance within theconversation window 806 is a check box (i.e., for positively indicatingthrough input by the user that the given utterance is associated withthe input intent) and an “X” box (i.e., for negatively indicatingthrough input by the user that the given utterance is not associatedwith the input intent). In this fashion, the depicted check box and “X”box is used for ease in administration of the intent authoring system soas to allow many utterances to be “scored” in a minimal amount of time.In other embodiments, however, various techniques may be considered forscoring the utterances. For example, in one embodiment, a scoring systemincluding a numerical range from 1-5 may be used to associate howclosely related the given utterance is to the currently considered inputintent. Many alternative forms for scoring each utterance relative tothe input intent may be used without limitation, as one of ordinaryskill in the art would appreciate.

Referencing now FIG. 9, a block diagram depicting a propagation example900 when implementing the content authoring tool 500 is illustrated. Thepropagation example 900 illustrates the utterances propagated from theremaining corpus of conversational logs upon the user scoring a selectedset of a subset of retrieved utterances. For example, for the user query902 “bill issue NOT payment”, the system returned a number N set (e.g.,10) of retrieved utterances from the conversational logs believed to berelevant to the given semantic scope of intent provided by the user. Theuser then labeled a first portion 904 (a selected set) of the number Nset of retrieved utterances as positively associated with the intent(e.g., “issue with broadband bill”, “mobile bill”, etc.) and a secondportion 906 of the number N set of retrieved utterances as negatively(not) associated with the intent (“internet issue”, “sim card issue”,etc.). Using the user-defined labels created for the respectiveutterances positively associated with the intent (i.e., the firstportion 904), the system propagated this information using defined rulesand classifications to assign a positively identified label (positivelyassociated with the defined intent) to a remaining retrieved portion 908of the corpus. These positively labeled utterances (of the first portion904 and the remaining retrieved portion 908) are then used as input toadditional classifiers associated with a plurality of learningalgorithms (applied parallelly or sequentially) to accurately label theremaining entirety of the corpus of conversational logs according to thescope of the intent.

Again, it should be noted that one classifier or learning algorithmmodel may be used as input to another (alternative) classifier orlearning model, hence this is a co-training process. Accordingly, thefunctionality of the present invention requires the user to label only aselected sample of utterances retrieved pursuant to an intent searchquery, wherein the system then propagates these label responses andtrains additional classifiers and/or learning models independently,automatically, and iteratively. The training data may contain noise dueto imperfect automatic labeling, hence the process involves only weaksupervision. This model, which is unique to each conversational logcorpus, may then be implemented in a particular clients automatedresponse or live dialog system 510 to virtually respond tocustomer/client queries and/or inputs.

The present invention may be an apparatus, a system, a method, and/or acomputer program product. The computer program product may include acomputer readable storage medium (or media) having computer readableprogram instructions thereon for causing a processor to carry outaspects of the present invention.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/oredge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present invention may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, or either source code or object code written in anycombination of one or more programming languages, including an objectoriented programming language such as Smalltalk, C++ or the like, andconventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C”programming language or similar programming languages. The computerreadable program instructions may execute entirely on the user'scomputer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone softwarepackage, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computeror entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario,the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through anytype of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer(for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example,programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), orprogrammable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readableprogram instructions by utilizing state information of the computerreadable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry,in order to perform aspects of the present invention.

Aspects of the present invention are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computeror other programmable data processing apparatus, create means forimplementing the functions/acts specified in the flowcharts and/or blockdiagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructionsmay also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can directa computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or otherdevices to function in a particular manner, such that the computerreadable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises anarticle of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects ofthe function/act specified in the flowcharts and/or block diagram blockor blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowcharts and/or block diagram block orblocks.

The flowcharts and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in theflowcharts or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of theorder noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks maysometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustrations, and combinations ofblocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustrations, can beimplemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform thespecified functions or acts or carry out combinations of special purposehardware and computer instructions.

The invention claimed is:
 1. A method for training an automated responsesystem using weak supervision and co-training, by a processor,comprising: receiving a plurality of conversational logs comprisinginteractive dialog sessions between agents and clients for a givenproduct or service; retrieving a subset of the plurality ofconversational logs according to a defined criterion, wherein the subsetof the plurality of conversational logs is retrieved in response to aninput query by a user such that the defined criterion comprises one ormore utterances relevant to the semantic scope of intent input by theuser during the input query; labeling, by the user, a selected set ofthe subset of the plurality of retrieved conversational logs, thelabeling associated with a semantic scope of intent considered by theclients; and applying a combination of propagation operations andlearning algorithms using the selected set of labeled conversationallogs to a remaining corpus of the plurality of conversational logs totrain the automated response system according to the semantic scope ofintent, wherein applying the combination of propagation operations andlearning algorithms further comprises: defining the labels by the userfor the selected set of the subset of conversational logs comprisingretrieved utterances to the subset of conversational logs according tothe input query; training a probabilistic classifier using the definedlabels of features of the retrieved utterances; wherein theprobabilistic classifier produces labeling decisions for the subset ofconversational logs; weighting the features of the retrieved utterancesin a model optimization process; and training an additional classifierusing the weighted features of the retrieved utterances and applying theadditional classifier to the remaining corpus.
 2. The method of claim 1,wherein the labeling further includes displaying the selected set of thesubset of conversational logs on a user interface (UI) and receivinguser input indicating affirmatively or negatively whether each of theselected set of the subset of conversational logs is relevant to thesemantic scope of intent.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein thecombination of propagation operations and learning algorithms areapplied in parallel to the remaining corpus; or the combination ofpropagation operations and learning algorithms are applied sequentiallyto the remaining corpus such that an output of a first operation is usedto train an input of a second operation performed on the remainingcorpus.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality ofconversational logs are received from a historical repository ofpreviously saved interactive dialog sessions; and the agents comprise atleast one of human operators and virtual operators.
 5. The method ofclaim 1, further including, in response to the input query by the user,presenting to the user suggested alternative queries to retrieve otherutterances within the remaining corpus of the plurality ofconversational logs relevant to the semantic scope of intent.
 6. Asystem for training automated response systems using weak supervisionand co-training, comprising: a processor executing instructions storedin a memory device; wherein the processor: receives a plurality ofconversational logs comprising interactive dialog sessions betweenagents and clients for a given product or service; retrieves a subset ofthe plurality of conversational logs according to a defined criterion,wherein the subset of the plurality of conversational logs is retrievedin response to an input query by a user such that the defined criterioncomprises one or more utterances relevant to the semantic scope ofintent input by the user during the input query; receives input of theuser labeling a selected set of the subset of the plurality of retrievedconversational logs, the labeling associated with a semantic scope ofintent considered by the clients; and applies a combination ofpropagation operations and learning algorithms using the selected set oflabeled conversational logs to a remaining corpus of the plurality ofconversational logs to train the automated response system according tothe semantic scope of intent, wherein applying the combination ofpropagation operations and learning algorithms further comprises:defining the labels by the user for the selected set of the subset ofconversational logs comprising retrieved utterances to the subset ofconversational logs according to the input query; training aprobabilistic classifier using the defined labels of features of theretrieved utterances; wherein the probabilistic classifier produceslabeling decisions for the subset of conversational logs; weighting thefeatures of the retrieved utterances in a model optimization process;and training an additional classifier using the weighted features of theretrieved utterances and applying the additional classifier to theremaining corpus.
 7. The system of claim 6, wherein the labeling furtherincludes displaying the selected set of the subset of conversationallogs on a user interface (UI) and receiving user input indicatingaffirmatively or negatively whether each of the selected set of thesubset of conversational logs is relevant to the semantic scope ofintent.
 8. The system of claim 6, wherein the combination of propagationoperations and learning algorithms are applied in parallel to theremaining corpus; or the combination of propagation operations andlearning algorithms are applied sequentially to the remaining corpussuch that an output of a first operation is used to train an input of asecond operation performed on the remaining corpus.
 9. The system ofclaim 6, wherein the plurality of conversational logs are received froma historical repository of previously saved interactive dialog sessions;and the agents comprise at least one of human operators and virtualoperators.
 10. The system of claim 6, wherein the processor, in responseto the input query by the user, presents to the user suggestedalternative queries to retrieve other utterances within the remainingcorpus of the plurality of conversational logs relevant to the semanticscope of intent.
 11. A computer program product for training automatedresponse systems using weak supervision and co-training, by a processor,the computer program product embodied on a non-transitorycomputer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program codeportions stored therein, the computer-readable program code portionscomprising: an executable portion that receives a plurality ofconversational logs comprising interactive dialog sessions betweenagents and clients for a given product or service; an executable portionthat retrieves a subset of the plurality of conversational logsaccording to a defined criterion, wherein the subset of the plurality ofconversational logs is retrieved in response to an input query by a usersuch that the defined criterion comprises one or more utterancesrelevant to the semantic scope of intent input by the user during theinput query; an executable portion that receives input of the userlabeling a selected set of the subset of the plurality of retrievedconversational logs, the labeling associated with a semantic scope ofintent considered by the clients; and an executable portion that appliesa combination of propagation operations and learning algorithms usingthe selected set of labeled conversational logs to a remaining corpus ofthe plurality of conversational logs to train the automated responsesystem according to the semantic scope of intent, wherein applying thecombination of propagation operations and learning algorithms furthercomprises: defining the labels by the user for the selected set of thesubset of conversational logs comprising retrieved utterances to thesubset of conversational logs according to the input query; training aprobabilistic classifier using the defined labels of features of theretrieved utterances; wherein the probabilistic classifier produceslabeling decisions for the subset of conversational logs; weighting thefeatures of the retrieved utterances in a model optimization process;and training an additional classifier using the weighted features of theretrieved utterances and applying the additional classifier to theremaining corpus.
 12. The computer program product of claim 11, whereinthe labeling further includes displaying the selected set of the subsetof conversational logs on a user interface (UI) and receiving user inputindicating affirmatively or negatively whether each of the selected setof the subset of conversational logs is relevant to the semantic scopeof intent.
 13. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein thecombination of propagation operations and learning algorithms areapplied in parallel to the remaining corpus; or the combination ofpropagation operations and learning algorithms are applied sequentiallyto the remaining corpus such that an output of a first operation is usedto train an input of a second operation performed on the remainingcorpus.
 14. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein theplurality of conversational logs are received from a historicalrepository of previously saved interactive dialog sessions; and theagents comprise at least one of human operators and virtual operators.15. The computer program product of claim 11, further including anexecutable portion that, in response to the input query by the user,presents to the user suggested alternative queries to retrieve otherutterances within the remaining corpus of the plurality ofconversational logs relevant to the semantic scope of intent.